How to train a dog to protect your chickens | Page 8 | Animals | Forums

The dog almost redeemed herself this weekend by eating mice. We forgot to close the run last night and she broke the fence down and killed 2 chickens, nearly killed another, and 2 are MIA. So now we have on chicken. SOB. Many bad thoughts went through my head when I saw her walking around this morning with a live bird in her mouth.

Yes, unfortunately. The 2 MIA are goners. We are down to one bird. I am going to pick up some more random breed older birds off of CL. There are a lot listed. I think one bird by herself will get lonely and plus we put all of that work into the coop, run, fence, etc.

We listed the dog on Craigslist last night for re-homing. She is an awesome farm/ranch dog but she can't be around chickens. I don't think we could fence them well enough to trust her out in the field anymore off of a lead.

They are fine, truly. It is strange, our kids aren't squeamish, understand that things are born and die, etc. I'm not sure if it is anything we are doing or just the way they are. My daughter is begging me to go hunt squirrel, rabbits, etc. and let her eat their meat. We went fishing on Father's day and she was practically in tears that we didn't catch anything she could eat.

We have to tell them about re-homing the dog but I figure when someone is interested in her I will tell them.

No kidding. I brought out my 22 pistol to finish a chicken off and I had to control myself.

I didn't go into the details in my earlier post, but she had a live chicken in her mouth and dropped it when she saw me coming. It looked mostly dead, a little bloody, could hardly move its head, etc. I went to shoot it with the 22 pistol and missed! How could I miss at 3 feet? Well, the muzzle blast woke the chicken up and it went running away. It is currently our only live chicken and she seems to be doing just fine.